Friday, December 19, 2014

In 1993, The Tragically Hip had a feverish fan base, two classic
rock’n’roll albums behind them and a reputation as the best live band in the
country. It was time to catapult into the big leagues: Fully Completely accomplished that. It also shaped everything the
band has done ever since.

They still play more songs from Fully Completely than from any other Hip release, and this isn’t a
band that routinely pulls out other obvious fan favourites. These are songs the
band clearly delights in playing: “At the Hundredth Meridian,” “Courage,”
“Fifty-Mission Cap,” the title track. And yet, as someone who was electrified
by this band in its earliest days, I remember that Fully Completely sounded hollow and empty to me in 1993. Obviously,
I was an outlier then—but in 2014, even with a boss remastering job, I still
feel the same way. Where is the “machine-revving tension” heard in their live
shows, then or now?

We find out in the liner notes to this box set (which includes
the remastered original album, a live set from 1992 and the long-lost tour film
Heksenketel). As was the standard of
the day, producer Chris Tsangarides (Judas Priest, Concrete Blonde) recorded
all the instruments in isolation: this was not the sound of a band with 1,001
nights in dingy bars behind them. It sounds like Def Leppard. It’s incredible
that singer Gord Downie sounds as impassioned as he does, considering the
unusually leaden rhythms behind him. You only need to compare the limp studio
version of the title track with the live version heard here—or, for that
matter, at any time on stage in the last two decades. Even though the end
result was their bestselling album, one senses from present-day quotes in the
notes that even the band themselves aren’t totally thrilled with the recording.
(Maybe I wasn’t such an outlier.)

It’s not the band’s worst record, of course. There are far too
many glimpses of greatness here for that, both musically and lyrically; no, the
Hip’s worst record would likely be something from the early 2000s, when they
sounded most adrift. And to Tsangarides’s credit, there is at least a sense of
dynamics heard on Fully Completely that you’d be hard pressed to hear in any
other arena rock records of the day.

If you’re a sentimental Hip fan, the live disc is more than
worth your while, featuring the entire album getting its Canadian debut at
Toronto’s Horseshoe Tavern. This is where the songs come alive, played by a
still-hungry young band, with a typically cryptic Downie throwing in

references to Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment in the middle
of songs (“It was I who killed the pawnbroker!”). He’s also at his lyrical
height, debunking American myths, exonerating the falsely accused, saluting
Jacques Cartier and Hugh MacLellan. And drummer Johnny Fay doesn’t sound like a
soulless robot on loan from late-’80s Aerosmith, which he does on the studio
album.

The time-capsule Heksenketel,
shot on grainy video by Mike Downie (Gord’s brother), is, on the surface, a
terrible film, to be endured by serious fans only. In a very modest,
deflationary and Canadian way, it spends as much time with the crew of the
Another Roadside Attraction tour than it does The Tragically Hip: we learn more
about Gord Downie’s bus driver than we do Gord Downie. Vive le proletariat! We
hear more about the logistics of travelling summer festivals than we do the art
that fuels them—sadly, not from manager Jake Gold (who doesn’t appear at all),
who might have brought a John Phillips-like presence to this Canadian take on a
travelling Monterey Pop. Instead, we learn how local security crews scan for
booze in pop bottles and what shifts are like for guys setting up trusses for
the stage.

We do, however, get to see David Milgaard, the wrongly convicted
subject of “Wheat Kings,” watch the band sing his story of exoneration to
thousands of people in his hometown. And we do get to see truly explosive
performances of “Blow at High Dough” and “Fully Completely” in front of rabid
fans in Montreal.

After peaking with this album and tour, the Hip purposely lifted
their foot off the pedal, which resulted in the murky, mysterious—and often
magical—Day for Night in 1994. Then
Downie started playing acoustic guitar with the band on stage, dialling down
the energy level onstage considerably. They had discovered what it took to play
up to everyone’s expectations of them, and decided they’d rather head somewhere
else instead—always looking for a place to happen, and on their own terms.

Willie
Thrasher is an Inuit singer/songwriter featured on the essential new
compilation—and ideal last-minute gift for the music-lover on your xmas
list—Native North America, which I reviewed here. (I also interviewed curator
Kevin Howes for Maclean’shere.) His is a common story: raised in the wild,
sent to a residential school where he was forbidden to speak or sing in his
native tongue, immersed in Western culture, and started to reclaim his heritage
in his 20s—which, in Thrasher’s case, he did with rock’n’roll. He does, after
all, have the perfect name for such a calling. He recorded one album in 1980,
but he still performs today: he’s a licensed busker in Nanaimo, B.C. As he says
below, “the wolves are still howling.”

I used only
a bit of this interview in the short piece I wrote for the print edition of
Maclean’s. What follows is an edited transcript of my favourite interview of the past
12 months.

Willie Thrasher

On the phone from his home in
Nanaimo, B.C.

November 10, 2014

Where did you grow up?

I was born
in Aklavik. My dad was a captain of a whale boat, a schooner. We never stayed
in town, my parents wanted to stay out in the wilderness. I would go out and
all I would hear would be wolves. I would chase ptarmigans. I loved wildlife. I
saw black bear, caribou, moose. It was so, so beautiful. Until I was about
five, my spirit was with the wilderness. When I turned five, my dad took the
boat to Aklavik to the Immaculate Conception Missionary School. I went there
holding my mom’s hands. She took me right to the school where I saw a big, big
nun. She yelled out, “Hi Mrs. Thrasher! Is this your son, William?” And they
hugged each other. “We’ll take care of him!” As soon as my mom went outside,
the nun turned really slowly to me, grabbed my hand, took me right to the boys’
side, cut my hair right off, and then every time I spoke my language I got
slapped in the face or had soap put in my mouth. I was told never to speak
Inuktitut. Never to sing or dance. That’s when my spirit was taken away
forever. I never forgot the day that happened.

Did you see your
parents again?

I was
allowed to go home two months in the summer. I stayed there from 1953 to 1958,
then from there I went to in Grollier Hall in Inuvik, which was a huge
residential school built by the government and run by the Roman Catholic
Church. One day I went to the gym because I was tired of everybody and there
was a set of drums there. Then I started doing this three, four times a week,
and I started becoming really good. Then one day the Hard Day’s Night movie came on.

At the school?

They were
showing it at the theatre. Ringo was my favourite at the time. I concentrated
on how Ringo was playing, and that was the turning point in my life. There were
a couple of guitar players around, and we became the first Inuit rock’n’roll
band in history, the Cordells. We started playing in different communities. Who
knew that a bunch of Inuit who used to hunt caribou and live off the land could
play rock’n’roll? It was so cool.

How did the amps and
guitars get up there? Forgive my ignorance, but what was electricity like?

Amplifiers
were sent from Edmonton, Calgary. Electricity was like it is today. It was a
big school, about 2,000 students. It was pretty civilized: fridge, stoves, TVs,
everything. When the Cordells started playing, we were one of the hottest bands
in the Northwest Territories.

How would you get to
gigs?

We used to
fly from community to community. We’d play dances and make $100, which was a
lot then.

How much was the
plane, though? You couldn’t have been making much profit.

Oh, $15.
But sometimes the pilot, Freddy Carmichael, would just give it to us for a
certain percentage. Or people who ran the dance would pay for it. This went on
for a while. Our band was really good. We’d practice on weekends and people
would listen to us.

What songs were you
playing?

Rolling
Stones, “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.” “Hard Day’s Night.” “Pipeline.” “Have
You Ever Seen the Rain.” The Beach Boys’ “I Get Around” [he sings it]. “19th
Nervous Breakdown.” “As Tears Go By.” “House of the Rising Sun.” And that song
by the Kinks, you know, [sings riff] “All Day and All of the Night.” “Gloria.”
We were really good.

When did you start
writing your own songs?

One night
we were playing a New Year’s dance and this old man came walking right up to us
and sat down and said, “Why don’t you guys write Inuit folk music about your
culture? About your ways?” He started telling us how the missionaries took our
ways away. We weren’t allowed to think, talk, hunt, dance or anything. This old
man who came that night—we never seen him again after. He told us who we were.
That night I couldn’t sleep. From that moment on, I was determined to be a
songwriter. I only had Grade 6 at the time, so I wasn’t that good of a writer.
But people loved it. What touched me the most was that it brought back my
spirit: who I was. I remembered stories my mom and dad and grandfather taught
me, and I thought, “I want to write music that way.”

When were you first
approached about this project?

My other
half was looking at email and she saw Kevin Howes trying to get in touch with
me somehow. So this was meant to happen. Kevin was working on this for years.
All of us [musicians] from the past had no idea. We thought these albums were
long gone and forgotten. But Kevin Howes put a fire in 23 performers to bring
them all back to life again. Everyone is getting so excited.

Did you have copies of
your old recordings?

Kevin Howes
sent me one about a month ago, of [the 1980 album] Spirit Child. It brought a lot of memories. I had long, long hair
and was living in Ottawa at the time, and Montreal. I had a call from CBC; they
said, “Willie, are you interested in doing an album?” I was honoured to
represent the Inuit and the Northwest Territories.

I knew the CBC
recorded a lot of indigenous artists at the time—as well as all sorts of
musicians from across the country—but did you have to apply for something? Did
they pick you out of the blue?

I was the
first Inuit to travel across Canada maybe 23 times in 12 years, or something like
that. I’d go from Montreal to Vancouver, playing in community after community,
then I’d go up to Whitehorse, then from there to Alaska, then back to Vancouver
then Calgary then Winnipeg then Toronto and then 39 states. I think it’s
because my dad was a traveller; he travelled for 21 years, eh? Once I started
travelling I couldn’t stop: couldn’t stop singing, couldn’t stop learning. I
met Pete Seeger in New York. I played with Gordon Lightfoot, Buffy Sainte-Marie
at colleges. I had a feeling at that time it would be my life. Even to this
day, I’m still playing. I just came back from the waterfront, where I was
playing.

How much travelling do
you do now?

Sometimes
Vancouver, sometimes around Vancouver Island. But I expect things will pick up
again after this record comes out. I’d like to play across Canada the States
and overseas.We’re not sure what’s
going to happen, but we’re getting ready for anything.

So you spend the 1970s
travelling and you end up in Ottawa and you make this record. What happens
between then and now? Do you continue to perform and write?

For me,
music will be with me forever. There is so much to learn. When Kevin Howes
brought all that back, it gave me encouragement to carry on. Then I started
hearing from Willy Mitchell and other performers I hadn’t heard from in a long
time. We write emails to each other. I see that they’re still rocking, still
performing.

You probably hadn’t
seen some of them since the Sweet Grass Festival in Val d’Or, Que., in 1980.

Exactly.
And some passed away. Willie Dunn passed away a couple of weeks after he was
interviewed for this project. Morley Loon passed away.

You and Morley Loon
had a band together in the 1980s, called Red Cedar.

Yes, in
Vancouver. I was mostly a person who loved to get people dancing and singing
and bringing them together. But Red Cedar had a different idea. They were more
into protesting and cutting people down. It was a band doing heavy protest
songs. I wanted to make music that helped people understand that we should all
be working together. I told Red Cedar, “If you guys do one more song like that,
I’ll walk out.” They did; I walked out and never went back. I was on my own
after that.

Do you think the time
period captured on this compilation was a particularly special period?

This is a
very historical thing that never happened before in Canadian history. This was
when rock’n’roll, all these young rockers, were nailing everybody with
beautiful songs and hippies were dancing all over the place. We were there. We
sang those songs. We tried to promote our own songs. We weren’t financed or
pushed like the others were. The only people who seemed to buy it at the time were
the Aboriginal people. But we kept going. The albums faded away.

Do you see a similar
spirit in younger Aboriginal artists today? Even if that spirit manifests
itself in music that sounds very different from what you were doing?

Well, I
never thought I’d see Indian and Inuit kids doing rap. It’s good. I see music
getting better and promoted better than it ever was in my life. It’s changed
dramatically. Once someone gets well known, they’ll be on APTN, CBC, on radio
stations. Back then, it was really hard. It was very difficult to travel, to
pay our own way, to make our own albums, to find an agent. Now it’s opened up a
lot more; there is a lot of light on Aboriginal folk, rock and rap music, all
because how we in the past opened the doors. There are thousands of Native
people who heard about us and want to know about us. Young Native musicians try
to follow our footsteps. Sometimes I hear someone singing my song, and they
say, “Oh, you’re the one who wrote it, eh? Can you play it for me?”

It touches
my heart very much. It brings back so much loneliness and happiness, memories
of where I was at the time, being wild, all the drummers and dancers and
singers I saw when I was young, at powwows and Native festivals. Who is Willie
Thrasher today? Willie Thrasher is an Inuit songwriter who doesn’t sing for
himself, he sings for all people, try to make them dance, try to make them
understand where we came from. That was my journey. It still is my journey, and
I have a long ways to go yet. And if it wasn’t for Kevin Howes and Light in the
Attic [Records], the fire wouldn’t have started. Now the wolves are howling.

Tuesday, December 09, 2014

(Excerpted from Exclaim’s year-end list, where In Conflict placed #3). Every one of
Pallett’s records is better than the last; it goes without saying that this is
his best. It’s supposedly his most personal; the only way you would know that
would be if he told you so. Because other than silly love songs, what more
universal themes could there be than control and chaos, fertility and faith,
memory and motion, drinking and depression, and the “terror of the infinite”?
Pallett not only transforms philosophy and poetry into pop songs, he’s
increasingly deft at balancing beautiful abstraction with a visceral punch,
never more so than on the thunderous “Riverbed.” Bringing his old Les Mouches
bandmates Matt Smith and Rob Gordon into the fold brings a live energy to half
the tracks here; elsewhere, Pallett plunges into whirlpools of synth arpeggios
just as often as he wields his trusty violin. (Read full blurb here)

Read my Maclean’s story about Pallett here. My original review and interview with him is here. My conversation with Nico Muhly about him is here. My conversation with our mutual friend Carl Wilson is here. My conversation with Pallett about Toronto now and then is here.

I’ve heard and admired Rosanne Cash
in the past, but from a distance. Nothing until now has made me want to dive in
deep. Either The River and the Thread
just happened to hit me at a certain time in my life (42, dad, formerly huge
roots music fan who left the flock long ago and got hooked on the TV series Nashville last year), or Cash is getting
even better with age and this is her masterpiece. It is, I’m told, her most
personal, based on southern travels she took to her father’s home state, where
she reconnected with generations of family stories that were largely alien to a
songwriter raised in comfort in California and New York City. The storytelling
and lyrics are unquestionably part of this album’s strengths, but the music
overshadows all: killer melodies (co-written with husband John Leventhal),
meticulously tasteful arrangements that still have plenty of soul, and,
obviously, top-notch players and singers all around. The middle of the road
rarely ever sounds this good. Yes, it’s too clean and pat for those who like
their music a bit messy, but I can’t fault perfection. Post-script: After
falling in love with this record, I highly recommend you read Cash’s memoir, Composed, from a couple of years back;
it’s just as delicious and beautiful.

My review for The Grid (R.I.P.) is here. (And my obit for The Grid is here.)

(Excerpt from October review) Few musicians, if any, have used
their art to suggest just how subversive queer culture was and is, how
dangerous it is to embrace supposed “flamboyance,” the marginalization that
exists outside of mainstream assimilation. Then along comes a guy who calls
himself Perfume Genius, with a song called “Queen,” with a chorus that baits:
“No family is safe / when I sashay.” This man does not want a peaceful life in
the suburbs and settling for tolerance rather than acceptance. He’s a queer
Stagger Lee, a homophobe’s worst nightmare, “casing the barracks / for an ass
to break and harness / into the fold / marry.” And he does so with a voice that
struts and seethes, staring down death and disease and contempt, backed by a
sparse and gutsy rhythm section that crafts majesty out of a bare minimum of
notes. (Read full review here.)

There is nothing more I can say that
Geoff Berner didn’t already say when he introduced her performance at the
Polaris Music Prize gala. Here is an excerpt from that speech:

“Animism
is a masterpiece because it transcends opposites. Dizzyingly complex and sophisticated
in structure, it also completely hits you in your guts, in your soul. It takes
traditions that are tens of thousands of years old, and makes truly innovative
music … If you listen, you will careen through a panorama of the contradictions
of existence. You can hear the living land, and the land under assault. You can
hear children being born—and conceived. You can hear the torture of the
innocent, and the glory of the tenacious, unstoppable force of life. If you
listen you can actually hear the sound of a people defying genocide to rise,
wounded but alive, strong, and ready to fight. There is no artist working today
more emphatically herself, more incomparable than Tagaq. There is no musician
in this world more powerful. Animism
is the album that finally translates her unique power to the recording studio.”
(Read Berner’s full text here.)

My original review is here. My piece for Maclean’s
about her Polaris performance is here. My piece about what her Polaris win means—or doesn’t—is here.

Among the
many things to love about The Future’s Void, it has the best song ever written
with word “interweb” in it. Erika Anderson is 27 years old, which makes her
skepticism of tech utopians much more interesting than a 70-year-old grandpa
with an acoustic guitar. EMA doesn’t shy from technology in her synth-heavy
music or her art—this album was accompanied by a visually provocative webzine—but
she is suspicious of social media’s societal effects. She flips between harsh
and industrial noises and pretty piano-based art rock, with a full-on ’90s
grunge throwback single (“So Blonde”) and a breezy Fleetwood Mac-ish acoustic
pop song (“When She Comes”) as red herrings; it’s telling that she can play to
mass appeal if she wants, she chose to play the considerably more aggressive
and jarring “Neuromancer” for her network TV debut on Letterman. Her howl is a
glorious thing: not since PJ Harvey in her prime or the early days of Karen O
has a female rock singer managed to snarl and scream while maintaining full
control of her pitch. No tracks here sound particularly alike; this woman is
not likely to run out of ideas in the near future.

Didn’t Blige once promise “No More
Drama”? It’s always a life-and-death struggle in song for this icon, but there are few
singers today who can convince you that they’ve hit bottom and crawled back up
and still fear slipping back every day. The
London Sessions is not a resurrection story, exactly: Blige’s career was
doing just fine before this. It is, however, a relocation and a revelation,
placing her largely in in stripped-down situations where her raw voice reveals
her to be the true queen she is. But five of the 12 songs here are also club
bangers, with shades of ’90s acid jazz, rave culture and modern EDM—except with
a significant dose of serious soul usually lacking in those genres. And if the
12 months of headlines that comprised 2014 left you feeling punched in the
stomach, then there’s no better remedy than “Whole Damn Year.”

I wrote this for Exclaim, where they placed this album #10 on their Underrated Records of 2014 list:
Calgary's Taylor Cochrane is at once a snotty punk, an ambient balladeer, a
swaggering falsetto singer and a folkie delivering soaring anthems — and that's
all on the first five songs. He's backed up from brilliant work by drummer Ryan
Kusz and two multi-instrumentalists who make sense of Cochrane's mayhem. Most
bands who try to do everything fail miserably; this one succeeds brilliantly,
despite an ungooglable name.

My review from June: Your summer should sound like this:
drunk, demented, delirious—and South American. This is what your World Cup
party feels like after your underdog team beats all odds and you find yourself
using a vuvuzela to imbibe multi-coloured sugary drinks you’ve never seen
before, kissing people in the street and waking up in a strange part of town.

Elbis Alvarrez is the one-man
operation from Bogota calling himself Meridian Brothers. On his third
international release—not counting his side projects, including the
mind-melting Los Piranas—he mashes together every equatorial genre of music
(cumbia, calypso, reggae, samba) and escorts you through a funhouse of mirrors.
Whether you dance or just sit there dazed is up to you.

Alvarrez has a simple methodology:
set up a killer percussion track, employ minimal rhythm guitar, and then wig
out on either processed lead guitar or fuzzy organs that sound like bees—all
while cackling maniacally like a Latin American Jean-Pierre
Massiera. Evil genius, or just plain genius? Maybe just the album
of the summer.

9. Bahamas – Is Afie
(Universal)

Timing is everything. Some acts peak
with their first album, only to become popular later. Some acts get major hype
right out of the gate, and then no one is still paying attention when they
start making far superior music 10 years into their career. Afie Jurvanen, on
the other hand, gets better with every record, and was starting to sell out
major theatres even before we got to hear this, his third, on which his soft
sell is seductive and soothing. He’s a killer guitarist who directs his energy
into crafting arrangements rather than soloing, and the female voices and
strings with which he surrounds himself sweeten the pot even more.

This one is personal. I’m 43 years young.
Lemme tell ya, kids, life gets rougher as you get older; some days it’s tough
to see the love in the world and in each other. This summer, my ladyfriend and I drove down to Merge Records’ 25th anniversary party
week in Carrboro, N.C.; we fell in love there at the label’s 15th
anniversary. This album had just come out. Driving around the back roads of
“North Cackalacky,” these garage rock geezers told me everything I wanted to
hear: that it’s never too late to start again, to start working on new dreams,
to rediscover the sparkle and shine in a lover’s eye. (It takes work, of
course. See: “I’m Trying (To Be the Man You Need.”) Staying up late, talking
all night, and dancing at rock’n’roll shows is not the exclusive domain of the
young; indeed, it’s what keeps one young. Greg Cartwright, formerly of the
Oblivians and the Deadly Snakes, has been around a few blocks, so he should
know. The romantic lyrics aren’t the only sign of mellowing: the rich organ and
string sections bring out his deep love of Memphis soul. Is Shattered one of
the best records of 2014? Objectively, I’m not sure. But it meant the world to
me.

Kevin Drew deserves credit for many
things: for co-founding Broken Social Scene and keeping it together, for being
Toronto’s best ambassador pre-Drake, for at least two great BSS albums, and
co-founding the Arts and Crafts label. On this, his second solo album, Drew
truly emerges as a songwriter who doesn’t need a small army behind him; his
production is also top-notch, warm and inviting, rich in atmosphere even in its
loudest moments.

My original review is here. My Q&A with Drew and Andy Kim for Maclean’s is here.

I saw this band open for Shearwater
in the spring, and they drove me nuts. My ladyfriend bought the record,
however, and I slowly realized how lovely these songs actually are. They
soundtracked many late evenings for the rest of the year. Lesson learned—yet
again—about books, covers, and all that. My review from May:

Joel Thibodeau, a eunuch-voiced
singer/songwriter from New England, sums up the ever-elusive and mysterious
creative process better than most: “I don’t know what to do when the universe
is in my room.” Clearly, however, he figured it out on this, his third album,
for which he travelled to Iceland. Sure enough, Jonsi from Sigur Ros—a man with
an almost identical range and timbre as Thibodeau—shows up. Arrangements of
Thibodeau’s wonderfully wistful, melodic folk songs are adorned with marimbas,
glockenspiels, fuzzed-out bass, pump organs, accordions and other instruments
that seem to be always lying around Icelandic studios (see also: Bjork, Mum,
Nico Muhly). On first impression, Thibodeau is too fey by half, with lines
like, “I have an unbridled ideation / jumping over every moon
with indignation.” He also enjoys employing words like “derring-do” and “looky-loo” with a straight face. He’s nothing if
not earnest, and it wouldn’t be surprising to discover that he spent the six
years since his last album in a seaside cabin with a library of pre-Victorian
literature. (He didn’t—to my knowledge, anyway.) No matter your take on the
lyrics, however, the melodies and arrangements are consistently and almost undeniably
gorgeous.

13. Robert Plant – Lullaby
and the Ceaseless Roar (Nonesuch)

No one would ever accuse Robert Plant
of having a more successful career outside of Led Zeppelin than when he was in
one of the biggest rock bands in the known universe. But judging by his last
three records, that may yet be the case. The lessons he learned from singing
with Alison Krauss have served him immensely: when a voice with such power
chooses to focus with such restraint, it’s chilling and gorgeous—never more so
than on “Stolen Kiss,” which must surely stand with his greatest vocal
performances in his 45-year career. West African and Arabic influences abound
here, as do those of his British Isles old and new: folk music and Bristol
beats. With an ace band surrounding him dealing in textures and rhythms, this
new Robert Plant we’ve come to know and love continues to surprise. My original
review is here.

My February review: This Guelph guitarist is noted for
his wailing heavy metal leads in his rock band the Big Idea,
where he has collaborated with Prince percussionist Sheila E. and members of
the Stray Cats and Extreme. But he has a whole other acoustic side of him that
revered Django Reinhardt’s style of gypsy jazz. It’s that pursuit that led to this
collaboration with arguably the best Balkan brass band in the world, the
12-piece Fanfare Ciocarlia, who hail from a remote region of Romania. They
specialize in a blistering, relentless tempos and virtuosic display. It’s hard
to imagine them taking a back seat to anyone, never mind a Guelph guitar
teacher. It’s just as hard to imagine Raso carving out a space for himself
amidst Fanfare Ciocarlia, who have played together for decades. And yet: both camps meet here as
complementary equals. Neither is here to upstage the other. Even though Raso’s
fingerwork can match the brass players 16th note for 16th
note, more importance is placed here on the actual songs and group dynamic. We
know these people are all incredible; they don’t feel they have to prove it in
every phrase. On “Spiritissimo,” Raso even makes room for another guitar hero,
Rodrigo Sanchez, of Rodrigo y Gabriela, with whom he shares a similar love of
metal shredding and flamenco.

15. Leonard Cohen – Popular
Problems (Sony)

This octogenarian doesn’t need Lady
Gaga’s starpower to help him deliver a bestselling album (though there are
plenty of lady voices throughout, of course). His previous record, Old Ideas,
is far superior, but Popular Problems shows that it wasn’t a fluke: this
creative comeback is going to last as long as he wants it to. My original
review is here. And let's not talk about that album cover.

16. St. Vincent – s/t (Universal)

Excerpted from my February review: Annie Clark, a.k.a. St. Vincent, has
always been smart. Too smart, as if she’s approaching her music like an
algebraic equation rather than creative expression. She’s always been talented.
Too talented. She’s an operatic singer and a shredder on the guitar and loves
to immerse herself in distorted electronics, and often she liked to flex all
those muscles at once. Such is the folly of youth. She’s now 31. This is her
fifth album, if you include her full-length collaboration with David Byrne, on
which she began to leave her head and loosen up her body. (Byrne knows more
than a few things about that divide. See: Stop Making Sense.) St.
Vincent, the album, is a bold new statement of purpose. (Could you tell
from her new look?) Clark has always had the confidence, the swagger, the
chutzpah to go for the gold and hope her technical prowess would carry the day.
This time, she’s also got guts and heart and grooves and songs to complete the
package. Read the full review here.

17. The Roots – And Then
You Shoot Your Cousin (Universal)

What the hell is going on here? Exactly. Questlove describes this as the
Roots’ first opera; the most ambitious hip-hop band in history has dealt in
concept albums before, with mixed success, but this definitely sounds
theatrical, with classical and jazz and noise interludes, operatic vocals,
crooning, soul claps, ’70s soundtracks and full orchestration. Ever since they
took the Jimmy Fallon gig—which no doubt pays a few bills—the Roots’ albums
have taken increasingly left-field turns, and this is the wildest of them all.
Conversely, it also has some of their best pop hooks. Now that their day job
has imbued them with unlimited mainstream visibility, it’s easy to take this
band for granted. Don’t. They never would. My original review is here.

18. Jack White – Lazaretto
(Third Man)

It’s not enough that White already
embodies everything I love in a great rock’n’roller (he’s one of the only
interesting rock guitarists alive) or that his move to Nashville has brought
welcome country elements into the mix, but with the title track to Lazaretto he
even manages to borrow from hip-hop: specifically, the Beastie Boys circa Check
Your Head. White’s talent is so sickening that there are times when Lazaretto
feels a bit contrived, a bit too precious, a bit of an Americana museum piece.
But that’s all in the mind of an academic, emotionally constipated listener; on
a gut level, Lazaretto is fantastic,
with White surrounding himself with ladies—lots of ladies—and gentlemen who
bring out the best in him. Songs take detours and cross genres on a whim and
White is the squealing ringmaster conducting it all. Spreading himself thin hasn’t
hurt him a bit.

Excerpt from my October review: I’ve never cared for Aphex Twin in
the past. Yet I love this album. Has he changed—or have I? (We’re the same
age.) It’s natural for an innovator to sound benign two decades after first
turning tables (or turntables). It’s entirely possible that Aphex Twin’s
influence—digitally deconstructed beats and tones that can sound randomly
generated to the untrained ear—is so far-reaching that we now take it for
granted. Squiggly bass, spasmodic rhythms, melodies as fleeting as
jazz improvisations, played on alternately soft and distorted
synthesizers—Aphex Twin weaves various discombobulated layers together to make
something dense yet danceable, distant yet strangely seductive. Syro
displays a maturity, a confidence in which James doesn’t feel like he has to
prove anything to anyone or even himself. There’s no need to be oppositional
for the sake of it; there’s no envelope to consciously push against. Left on
his own, in that small Scottish village, the mad musical mind of Richard D.
James doesn’t have to compete with the noise of the world. He’s already changed
the face of music; now he can sit back and enjoy it. So can we—some of us, for
the first time.

20. Timber Timbre – Hot
Dreams (Arts and Crafts)

This band has been working a
noir-ish, twangy shtick for years now, but it’s not getting tired—it’s getting
even better. The grooves, the textures, the melodies, the overall balance
between spooky seduction and downright discomfort is struck perfectly. It’s
been a good year for them: a spot on the Polaris shortlist, an unforgettable
debut headlining slot at Massey Hall (where the carefully chosen, celebratory
exit music over the P.A. was Yello’s “Oh Yeah”), and an acclaimed side project
(Last Ex). Sure, all the songs sound the same. Carolyn Mark once asked, “Is it
a groove, or is it a rut?” This is most definitely a groove. My original review
is here.